Search engine optimisation (SEO) may be the word on recruiters’ lips when it comes to driving traffic to websites and job ads, but new research reveals that a mix of digital marketing methods is proving popular. Email marketing (40%), web analytics (34%) and display advertising (39%) were among the most popular techniques being integrated with SEO or pay per click (PPC), according to research from digital marketing optimisation company Coremetrics.

David Johnston, business development manager at recruitment sector web design and development company HotLizard, agrees that SEO has become a buzz word. He told Recruiter that agencies should be taking an integrated approach if they aren’t already. “You get companies ringing up recruiters to say their SEO is poor and that they can get them to number one in the Google rankings but there’s more to it than that,” he said. “Everything should go together — email marketing, PPC, SEO etc — and they should be tracking the response of everything to see what is working.”

When asked which digital marketing techniques they have abandoned or reduced spend on in the last six months due to the credit crunch, 41% of marketers said natural search and SEO compared with only 4% on PPC.

But Nigel Muir, managing director of DBD Media, a search engine marketing specialist which works with a number of recruitment companies, told Recruiter that those who want to get the edge on their search campaigns still need to work hard on SEO inhouse or with a specialist company.

“There is a misconception that SEO is just about including keywords in website copy but there is much more to it than this. Google constantly changes the rules that dictate its search engine rankings to ensure increasingly relevant results,” he explained.

“Understanding how to adjust SEO campaigns quickly and effectively is key to ensuring that SEO budget is not wasted,” Muir added.